2020

Trump admits that Easy Voting would Defeat Republicans. That’s because they’ve made Their Base White and Evangelical

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Colin Kalmbacher at Law&Crime surveys reactions to Trump’s admission in an interview on Fox News that a mail-in ballot program that made it possible for the public to vote with ease and increased turnout would keep Republicans from ever being elected again. Voter suppression has not always been a purely […]

Israel/ Palestine

The Israel Gov’t is taking advantage of Pandemic to Heighten Military Dictatorship over Palestinians

Asa Winstanley

The populations of many countries the world over are right now living under unprecedented quarantine measures and restrictions on movement. The threat of the rapidly spreading coronavirus pandemic has changed the world for the foreseeable future. It is true that most people who contract COVID-19 (the disease caused by this new coronavirus) will suffer only […]

Employment

Pandemic will cause another Housing Crisis, and Without Strong Long-Term Gov’t Policy it Will hit Workers Hardest

The Conversation

By Roshanak Mehdipanah and Gregory Sallabank | – Millions of Americans are suddenly out of work as the financial and economic crisis sparked by the coronavirus pandemic deepens. Without an income, most of these people will have a hard time covering their expenses, including keeping a roof over their heads. But even before the current […]

Donald Trump

How My Dad, Born just before the Spanish Flu, Predicted the Decline of America

William J. Astore

( Tomdispatch.com) – My dad was born in 1917. Somehow, he survived the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918-1919, but an outbreak of whooping cough in 1923 claimed his baby sister, Clementina. One of my dad’s first memories was seeing his sister’s tiny white casket. Another sister was permanently marked by scarlet fever. In 1923, my […]

China

The Real Danger behind Trump’s “China Virus” Mantra

Martin Powers

Ann Arbor (Special to Informed Comment) – The “China-Virus” mantra illustrates well this administration’s habit of responding to challenges by branding people as ethnic, religious, or political types ranked good or bad, us or them. Not a few have dismissed this practice, rightly, as racist, scapegoating, or just off the point, but the administration’s groupthink […]

Feminism

Presence-as-Resistance: Iranian Women and the Politics of Social Contestation

Navid Pourmokhtari

The history of everyday public resistance on the part of women’s movements in Iran

Donald Trump

Trump bashed Immigrants, but Nearly 1/3 of US Doctors are Foreign-Born, on Pandemic Front Lines

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – It turns out we need those foreigners after all, despite what Trump thinks. On Sunday British investigative journalist Iain Overton tweeted, The names of the first three doctors to die fighting COVID-19 in the UK Amged el-HawraniAdel el-TayarHabib Zaidi — Iain Overton (@iainoverton) March 29, 2020 The significance is that […]

Donald Trump

Maybe that Imperial Presidency Idea wasn’t so Great: The Coronavirus Reveals that America Long Since Fell Apart

David Faris

Chicago (Special to Informed Comment) – If you were asked three months ago, when news of the novel Coronavirus we now call Covid-19 was just emerging from China, which rich country in the world was the most defenseless against a global viral pandemic, would you have said anything but the United States? The Coronavirus crisis […]

Epidemics

Coronavirus: Corporate Media ignores how Privatization of Hospitals explains Lack of Beds, Ventilators

John Buell

Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – The escalating total Covid 19 deaths in New York City and the frantic quest to obtain life saving medical gear has rightly captured media attention. New York governor Andrew Cuomo’s impassioned plea for more federal assistance and a need-based system for allocating aid among the states was […]

Archives for 2020